“The greatest discovery was elderflower cordial. There are not many soft drinks that taste interesting or complex in the way that wines can, but elderflower cordial, diluted with still or fizzy water, is quite enough to send a wine-writer into his or her customary paroxysms of adjectival description. Fragrant, flowery, limey, grapey…it really is all of these. Visiting wine buffs swoon over it, the children clamour for it at the fridge door.” (Kathryn MacWhirter, Independent on Sunday)

What is a Cordial? Although terms like “squash” and “juice” have clearly defined meanings set out in labelling regulations, the same regulations specify that the term “cordial” has no special meaning and can be applied to any drink. Historically the meaning of cordial is, of course, “hearty”, i.e. good for the heart and circulation, and by extension generally beneficial for health (remember that when this term was coined heart disease was virtually unknown, so “good for the heart” did not mean good for cardio-vascular disease specifically – that’s a twentieth century phenomenon). Old cordials were generally herbal brews, which although they may have been sweetened, were generally preserved with alcohol. In the USA to this day cordials are alcoholic drinks or what we would call liqueurs. Vermouths, whose main flavouring is wormwood (Artemesia absinthium), were originally remedies for internal parasites, and also came from the family of herb cordials. Another old concoction was the “rob”, which was made by boiling fruit or vegetable juice until it was reduced to a syrup, or in some cases until it would set like a jam, which would then keep because of the high sugar level, and because of the sterilising effect of the boiling. With added herbs robs gave a way of preserving herbal benefits without using alcohol. The cordials we know in this country belong to this branch of herbal medicine, while in America the name stuck to their alcoholic siblings. When refined sugar became widely available, the practice began of making lime cordial by adding large amounts of sugar to lime juice to make a syrup, in which the beneficial vitamin C was preserved. As we know, this was a potential life saver on long sea journeys where lack of vitamin C often led to death from scurvy. Nowadays fruit cordials are made by adding sugar to all kinds of fruit juices. The result is more a flavoured syrup than a preserved fruit, and these kind of drinks have no place in a healthy life style where fresh fruit or juices are available. They simply add unnecessary refined sugar to our diets, which already contain far too much. Modern herb cordials are rather different and can be described (in most cases) as an improvement on the old robs, as with the modern method it is possible to make a herbal extract by infusing herbs directly in a strong syrup. This syrup squeezes the goodness out of the herbs by osmotic pressure, so there is no need for cooking, and the flavours and benefits of the herbs are preserved a much fresher and more natural condition than they are in any other extraction process. A fresh herb cordial, such as elderflower, ginger, or nettle, is really the ultimate way of preserving both the fresh flavour and the benefits of these delicate herbs – as a simple taste test confirms.